The Great Escape

Up early (honestly-though it was difficult to be otherwise with the tramping of feet down the street from the early hours all going to see Papa Bento). Despite the allure of commemerative umbrellas, folding chairs and even windbreaks, we decided to give mass a miss and get out for the day. So we recharged our Metro tickets (K is still miffed that the machine will not speak to her in English as requested whilst it will quite happily do so for me and that my Portuguese mumblings produce results, ie tickets, whilst hers in particular as regards sha or tea mostly get blank stares- c'est la language vie!) and made it onto the 8.55am train to Aveiro - we were amazed and consternated that we had made it out of Porto before 9am as planned! The Great Escape had begun!

Aveiro is in the Bairo Litoral - so we even made it into a whole new area of Portugal than the Douro - and is known as Portugal's Venice. A very long walk down the Avenue - much further than the guidebook indicated and we hit Aveiro itself and the rain also paid us a visit but after a quick hot chocolate, the sun was out and it was time to wander the peaceful canals with seaweed nibbling fish, as well as brightly coloured seaweed boats and adjacent houses plus funky bridges all accompanied by the distant hum of the motorway. This is definitely the place to come if you are Azelujos hunting and if you want to discover moles in eggs.





Ovos Moles - local speciality, sweet and orange and gooey inside

Unfortunately, Papa Bento's visit meant that some of the restuarant owners including the one over the fish market, were on pilgrimmage to Porto, but we managed to get a good, thincrust pizza (mine with capers -described as akin to olives) and indulged in the required colouring on the paper tablecloth - the best examples of which get put on the walls - don't think our efforts will make the cut but if you visit and see a Frosty at the Beach that looks like it's been drawn by a 5 year old - then he's ours!

Frosty needs no introduction

Then, it was the long, long walk back, this time punctuated by shopping ostensibly to shelter from the rain, but shooes were again viewed as well as a lovely homeware shop (butterflies were pinned onto the merchandise with such care I wanted to take photos) - we have the web address for future :) It was nice to be back in a small place where people are friendlier and try really hard to communicate with us despite our lack in both Portuguese and English, as the cafe owners and the shop assistants all proved. Then, it was back on the train to Porto, tiredness and the blurring scenery making us nod off, but we were safe in the knowledge that if we dropped off, we were the last stop on the train, so should hopefully not end up anywhere unexpected. The great shopping expedition starts tomorrow - really we have been very restrained to date......

Further adventures in Portuguese perplexity

Wed, the sun came out! We both jumped out of bed early in the morning, full of enthusiasm... ok not quite. Nevertheless we thought we'd try to see Ribeira and the terracotta roofs washed in sunshine instead of rain for a change. A quick hop on our favourite form of transport so far, the funicular, and indeed Ribeira is a different place in the sunshine.

This time we even ventured off the main tourist path of the riverfront and up some windy stairs and along sidestreets. The Lonely Planet describes this area as 'surprisingly ungentrified' and they're not wrong. What makes me laugh is that everyone hangs their washing up outside with no embarrassment whatsoever. One household it appears had only washed one pair of underpants and there it was on display for all the tourists with their cameras.

Spot the underwear

Whilst wandering we came across a little old lady barbecuing sardines outside her front door. She very helpfully proferred un-asked for directions back to the river, not a word of which we understood, but we thanked her politely and found our way back to the riverside.

Now this is where we discovered a whole new world of ice tea and vending machines - 'press' a 'button' and the nice man inside the makeshift vending machine will drop a can of exotic fruits ice tea. Big crowd, lots of laughing. Marketing genius.

Other highlights from the day include a visit to Cafeteira da Bolhau (that might not be exactly how you spell it) - a beaux-arts deli/cafe very close to our hotel, full of locals, where the friendly waitress did a Popeye impression to convey 'spinach soup'. We're pretty sure that's not what it was, though. Like the Cafe Majestic should be - traditional, established, but real. You have to get there early though - lunch is their main meal, if you want a light tea or cake / coffee / port on your way home from work - 7.30 is the latest you can get there. And they will mop the floor around you, adding the aroma of bleach to your dining experience. We liked it so much, we went back on Thursday.

Thursday, after being kept awake by a combination of howling dogs and howling people (allegedly singing), we got lazy and hopped in a taxi to a new part of town for us (uphill) - Cordoaria. The main thing of note here is a lovely park, which according to the official sign is where historically, the cord warners gathered. Once again, our English let us down. We had heard rumour of a vegetarian restaurant, which we did find - and it had closed down. Not much call for it here, I suppose. We still managed a nice lunch with Nothing Fried, then ventured into the Centre for Portuguese Photography. This building used to be a prison, and they've left the bars and the gates in. For some reason, they've also left a couple of guards. Only a handful of people in there, all acting guilty, shifting feet, whispering, we were quite convinced we would get locked in. We didn't linger long but made our way out to sunshine and boys playing football, and saw a gathering of cord warners taking place in the garden. Well, I don't know if they were cord warners but what else would they be doing there?

Over apple ice tea (which turned out to be apple juice) we both agreed this is our least favourite part of Porto so far - not just because of the prison, there's also the Jewish quarter and something a little depressing about it all. Not to mention worrying about what the cord warners are up to these days. The one bright spot is the sculptures in the garden - men on benches laughing, men falling off benches laughing. Perhaps the artist agreed the whole place needed a lift.

Oh, and one last word to any readers who are professors and are having streets named after them in Porto - don't get too excited. They'll change the names before long and all the maps will be wrong.

We be Touristas!

We had just set off (admittedly close to midday) when the rain came down and so, it was a rush to find the funicular – the map was getting very soggy and so we were scanning for street names with increasing verve, when I spotted a lift with 'furnicular' written on it – so our first surprise of the day was that the furnicular started underground (they might want to state that in the guidebook). Our second challenge was to get our heads round the metro ticket system – it purportedly had an English version, but as so often here, our English was lacking. What seemed to say 2 titles for 24 hour card (which we wrongly interpreted as 2 people) was in fact a 48 hour card for 1 person, as explained by the kindly metro employee who showed up when we tried to get 2 people through the barrier on one ticket. To add to the confusion, you buy tickets for zones (Z1, Z2 etc) but the map has zones marked as C1 & S8 etc marked right next to each other with no obvious explanation – we took Z2 as per the employee's advice and thankfully the ticket inspectors don't seem to stop tourists.... so far so good.

Going down... view from the funicular carriage

The furnicular added to our transport experience, which today came on in leaps and bounds having also hit the metro. It was like a slow rollercoaster ride down to the Ribeira quayside which made me thankful we had avoided a whole load of steps. We then proceeded to take photos in true British fashion in the rain of Gustav Eiffel's bridge and the pretty and characterful townhouses which adorned the quay before admitting defeat and having a hot chocolate to warm up. After some souvenir shopping (some nativity scenes were indeed purchased in May) and the recognition that our Euros may not go so far in Porto itself down to the shopping opportunities (K sighed shoooooes on more than one occasion plus handbags are in plentiful supply and we have already indulged in scarves to fit in with the locals and I am more than happy with the homeware selection on offer....), we headed back to the metro.

Just behind the riverside, winding alleyways and steep steps

It is strange how certain experiences convince you that you are indeed in a foreign land. The weather was doing its best to bring on childhood regression to UK based holidays for both of us but the metro lifted us out of such confusion and centred us once again happily into holiday mode. We made our way to Casa de Musica, an architechtonic, asymmetrical white concrete wonder with metal staircases that would make a fine Dr Who filmset, with the intention of trying to be cultured and obtain tickets for a musical extravaganza (as long as such did not include Annie or anything in the genre of Andrew Lloyd Weber). We decided against an Austro Hungarian sex comedy and plumped for a piano recital and tickets duly purchased (we weren't even allowed the liberty of practising our favourite but admittedly appalling Portuguese phrase (doysh billetas) to gain these), we then took on the challenge of our first self service restaurant. Now, you may think that self service should be a piece of cake but no, in this case we were firmly told cake was not on the menu -you must choose from jelly or fruit or what we think was blancmange, even though cake was clearly sitting there just to trip you up – and also, managed to offend the Portuguese serving ladies further not by asking for the vegetarian special (yes there was actually a veggie dish on the menu) but by refusing the included in the price soup (it was pea) and also, by committing the cardinal sin of not following up our set menu with a coffee.

Piano recital posters

We emerged from our visit to another planet to find that the sun was trying to make an appearance and so wandered over to the nearby park to look at the war memorial topped with a lion killing an eagle or a griffin – it was hard to be sure and some googling will be required to determine the significance.

After a day of hard transport use and having actually seen some of the tourist highlights of Porto, we continued in our tourista vein, by having afternoon tea at the Majestic cafe. It seemed a little odd to be drinking tea and eating scones in Portugal, but we were assured that explorers first brought tea to England from Portugal and so, their tea drinking precedes ours, but the strangeness was exacerbated by the cheese grinning cherubs on the wood paneled walls and the intermittent camera flashes. However, this was nothing as then, the piano playing started. His first rendition of Abba's Winner Takes It All did seem a touch out of place for an eighteenth century cafe, but he soon topped this with Cliff's We're all Going on a Summer Holiday – I went into complete meltdown having an immediate flashback to hours of being stuck in a car feeling travel sick with a choice of Cliff's greatest hits (from my mother) and Radio 4 (from my father), whilst K started singing along much to my surprise and that of the other cafe patrons – this was her family's onset of a journey song and therefore held much fonder memories for her – it definitely loses its appeal after several repetitions with no journey's end in sight. This time, despite some elongated tinkling at the end to give it a flourish it did only last 5 minutes and so, we all survived relatively unscathed.

Especially for E's mum

Touristed out, we got the metro across the bridge to Gaia and spent some time in the park there enjoying the views in the early evening sunshine (yes – we even took our jackets off for the first time to take some snaps actually looking like we were on holiday a la Dolans in the 80s.)

The sun did come out... eventually

Porto had thus far borne little resemblance to Weymouth (Weymouth had balmy sunshine and calm seas to paddle in) but we were to find a weird similarity this evening – just like Weymouth, Porto shuts down at 8pm – if you haven't got your dinner by this time, you need to find a proper stay open late restaurant – as we only needed a snack having had the menu at lunch, we were forced to buy what were described as tuna sandwiches from the one supermarket open until 8.30pm – though we discovered today that the metro has a fine array of vending machines if we find ourselves in this position again.

Thus fortified, we went to the hotel bar mainly for the internet and also, tried to get some tea. K eventually managed to get some of the heated variety minus milk after handing the phrasebook to the barman, who still looked confused, despite having a pristine coffee machine that spewed out hot water fine and a selection of teabags. I decided to make things simple and have Ice Tea but was denied all glasses (hi-ball and tumblers obviously were not appropriate) and was given a wine glass but at this point was past wondering why. We settled in front of the TV which demonstrated Portugal's priorities – coverage on the news alternating between Papa Bento's visit to Lisbon and the football and when K discovered Cameron had been made PM, I decided the wisest course was to go off to bed and leave her to drink the bar dry in despair (if she could actually manage to order a drink and get it in a glass of course!)

Bye bye seaside, hello Porto, aka The sun will come out tomorrow

Reluctant as we were to leave Liliana's, I have a feeling we would never have seen much of Porto itself if we'd been able to stay, as we were just too comfortable. So here we are now in the heart of the city, at the Pensao do Norto. A little bit of a culture shock. My single room on the 3rd floor is one of the smallest rooms I've ever stayed in (bathroom even more so), but it's comfy and clean, and quiet considering how central we are. E's room a floor below is bigger (it has a chair!) and is near enough to the bar that we can tap into the wifi network. We are right opposite the Capella des Almas, the outside of which is completely covered in blue and white azujelos (painted tiles - a Porto speciality). We are also very near shops including SHOE shops so be warned, the blog may get retail-obsessed from here on in.

The stunning chapel

I can't help but feel at home in this city. (Here are some clues: football, rain, chips, surly Northern attitudes. Ringing any bells?) You can actually get a good cup of tea here, and you can get vegetables too so both of us are pleased. (I'd like to add here that it's perfectly appropriate for me to drink tea in Portugal – the Lonely Planet tells me our tea addiction is all the fault of Portuguese explorers who discovered it and brought it back to Europe.)

Tea Street

Even in this part of town you can tell it's an old city. I think that must be what makes it so utterly different from any other European city either of us have visited - the oldest parts are medieval and the houses are piled higgledy piggledy on top of each other. A glimpse of the market today was amazing, there are flashes of beaux arts architecture here and there, and of course the colourful tiles. The Sao Bento station is a really good example and well worth a visit even if you're not catching a train. They also sell cheap scarves if, like us, you're cold!

Sao Bento Station

Needless to say it poured with rain again today, and Papa Bento is on his way for a visit, so we're making plans for both staying dry and having a day out of the city. We noticed that Annie is on at a local theatre, and we were even treated to a blast of 'Tomorrow', which we felt was kind of appropriate given the lashing rain, and we hope, prophetic.

Just for E - I know how much she loves musicals

The Paddle

Portuguese folk have many ways of entertaining themselves by the sea, especially on sunny Sundays. But we've noticed that with the exception of surfers and dogs, they don't venture into the water itself.
Well, being brought up on British seaside holidays, we hate to miss the opportunity to roll our trousers up and get our feet wet. After a very rainy Saturday, we had decided that on our last day in Canidelo, we would go for a paddle, come hell or high water. Hell stayed away but we got the high water - huge, crashing, thundering waves, sucking sand back again with just as much violence. (Not the beach to pick if you want a swim.) The waves either miss you or soak you and we were quickly soaked (especially me as I forgot to roll my trousers up). The sand was swept from under our feet with such force that we were hanging on to each other to stop from falling over, and both shrieking like crazy. I'm sure we entertained the locals.
Not much like paddling in Weymouth.

Salgueiros Soundscape

No alarm clock. No phone. (No Chris Evans on the radio.)
Wind whistling around the building, sea growling, roaring, crashing, sucking. The tap of my fingers on the keyboard. The click and whirr of E's new camera. The whirr of the shutters going up and down. Dogs barking. Cocks crowing - one always sounds as if he's being strangled. Portuguese drivers beeping their horns, they appear to be communicating in a not-so-subtle language. Locals laughing good-humouredly at our attempts to communicate.
And if I'm being honest, the sound of the rain pattering, pouring off the scaffolding, dripping off my nose.

And then the rain came

Today, I woke up thinking K is having a shower, dozed off and woke up an hour later to find she was still having a shower, but in actual fact, this was the torrential rain pouring down the scaffolding outside. Our view had changed from fairly calm ocean sparkling in the sunshine to grey rough seas pounding against the shore and ominous dark clouds everywhere. Needless to say, we took this as a sign that more sleep and chill-out was called for (not that we had been lacking any, as thus far we had not made it out of the flat before midday) and K then decided to further my crime drama education with a non-stop marathon of all the CSIs. Though a check of the weather forecast revealed that the rain might be a fixture for the remainder of our stay, sending us regressing back to our childhoods with memories of damp and cold days at the beach (our choice of reading material (The Tent, the Bucket and Me) now did nto seem to augur so well...)

No-one, surprisingly, at the outdoor tables today

By mid-afternoon, even I was fully rested and more than a little crimed out and K was getting twitchy - not even her beloved Netbook was staving off the imminent meltdown (she has become worringly addicted of late - don't know what we're going to do if the next place does not have Tinternet...) and so, we decided to brave the weather and go for a walk up the hill rather than along the beach in search of a shop, as foodstocks were running a little low. K put on her trusty kagool and I risked it with no more than an umbrella, praying that it was not too windy and off we set. We trudged and sqeulched past dripping gardens with brightly coloured flowers and on past a campsite, (which increased our concern, as this day was more than a little reminsicent of both of our childhood holidays already without adding in the C-word) and finally saw a green cross indicating a pharmacy up ahead, which when we got there was unhelpfully closed (should be against the law to raise people's hopes like that) but there was a cafe up ahead, which was mercifully open and so, as the rain was getting heavier (definitely proper tidy rain this) we decided some Ice Tea would not go amiss.

I love an excuse to post a picture of the lovely Gil Grissom

After watching the cafe owner ferret under the cakes for the hidden supply of Ice Tea and sucombing to the Portuguese afternoon pick me up of sugar in the form of a fruit tart (mainly because it actually had more than one variety of real fruit on it), we sat there trying to dry out and warm up a little and observed the locals (my dad will be so proud of what my observations/nosiness achieved). There was granny been taken out for her weekly coffee and cake, two guys came in for a serious chat with a beer, which consisted of low level sounds and nods and then, the upandcoming young business man (selling air conditioning) came in to meet his girlfriend for a 'healthy' snack. Various other people popped in to buy bread and cakes and then, one guy also requested something which required the cafe owner to duck under the counter and produce a foil wrapped item- which looked to my veggie eyes like it could be ham and then uncover a meat slicing machine (it worryingly seemed to come out of nowhere but had been sitting on the counter the whole time). This made me think that our quest for food may be over, as where there is sliced meat, there normally is cheese, though you will receive a blank disbelieving look if you request one without the other. Of course, now all we had to do was manage to buy it, which is more difficult than it sounds as it was not within pointing distance....

Purchases successfully made (and quest for yoghurt abandoned), we trudged back down the hill and a minor miracle occurred in that near the bottom, the rain let up for our daily pilgrimage along the beach. K decided to take wave photos (though from my safe vantage point, it looked like she was going to come back completely submerged in the water if she made it back at all-more on the dangers of paddling tomorrow) and I visited the silent diggers - Portuguese builders do not work in the rain though the sand is surprisingly firmer.

Only took about 100 wave photos to get this one

For dinner, we decided to go back to our favourite restaurant of the night before (the one where we obtained salad) which had the additional advantage weatherwise of being just across the road. This time, after rejecting such delicacies as 'Tamborine or Frogfish rice' (maybe they have muscial frogs here) and 'Gifts of Ox', we duly decided on the local speciality of salted cod fish. We managed to find probably the only one out of infinite varieties that did not come with chips (roasted potatoes are not chips) -baked in breadcrumbs - and that also came with veggies: garlic spinach, vinegary crunchy carrots (don't knock them until you have been vegless for a few days) and something we did not recognise but happily ate anyway (in contrast to the Portuguese who seem only to eat the protein and the rice and chips naturally but leave the veg untouched, as if offended it has even graced the plate). We also reacquainted ourselves with vino verde (the waiter brought a small bottle this time without being asked as we are such lightweights) and decided that as we had managed a relatively healthy meal, we would have our first dessert (sugar pick me ups throughout the day obviously do not count). K went for the recommended choc cake but I went for the 'Biscuit' cake, which we have seen garnished with whole rich tea like biscuits round the sides (was a bit like a firm tiramisu minus the creamy topping). After such delights, all that remained was to push our way through the people huddled in the doorway smoking and hop across the street and into bed (after first completing our daily diary here naturally).

See the digestive biccies at the back?

Porto city at last

After upsetting the entire banking community (all 3 banks) in the next town by producing a 500 Euro note and having the audacity to expect them to change it and being given the salient advice by the final bank of calling the police for future refusals... we decided to lay low for a couple of days. Today we finally made it to Porto itself and set foot on the cobbles. The number 15 bus eventually showed up (the number 16 is seemingly more evasive and mysterious as it runs a coastal route on a very irregular timetable) and we got our tickets-the driver being confused by our readiness to proffer the correct change (we have been well trained in the UK). The bus route was long and winding sometimes going down really narrow lanes and through numerous villages-all with a bakery and fruit and veg shop (not that the Portuguese seem to eat any veggies whatsoever) and a florist-decoration of a dramatic and colourful nature being part of the culture here (in our living room we even have a black pseudo psychiatrist's chair that every time K sits down (as naturally I have commandeered the sofa) I expect her to start baring her soul rather than commenting on CSI). The local buses' bus station is next to the cathedral, which is the starting point for all the tours and we decided to be proper touristas for the day and grab a tour to get our bearings. As the bus tour was to leave shortly and we were hungry, we decided to go for the mini-motorised train after grabbing a bite in the cafe next to the cathedral.

As an aside, our Portuguese is coming along thanks to Poirot and CSI (we can now confidently say we are Belgian or American and know all the words for murder/killing). In the cafe, I managed to order the only meat-free dish (Portugal is really not veggie friendly- we nearly cried when we saw a salad that had more than lettuce and tomotoes in it) - cheese omelette - and then faced a barrage of fluent Portuguese which I could only counter with our other stock phrase - Ne falo Portuguesh (which normally stops everyone except Jehova's witnesses in their tracks) - turns out they were out of eggs but the cafe owner went and got some to make our omelettes rather than try and have that conversation with the touristas. (Of course the omelettes arrived with a mountain of chips).

After such fortification-including our usual Ice Tea (which is conveniently Ice Tea in Portuguesh-though have discovered a new flavour...), we clambered reluctantly into the train like vehicle. Just let me say, if a city has cobblestones, such transport is extremely ill advised and to make matters worse the driver was having problems with his automated audio guide so it was either early, late or covered completely by raucous music but in all cases very very loud and so, we were deafened, as well as bone rattled by the end of the 3/4 hour (or depending on how you looked at it complete lifetime later). However, on the plus side, we learnt some new English - Porto has buildings of architechtonic significance and some have even been demol-i-shed (emphasis on shed).....We had been promised a port wine cellar tour as part of the deal, but the guide neglected to mention that we needed to make our own way there and having seen the hike required on the other side of the bridge, we decided to save that pleasure for another day.

Being on the Pont Luis I bridge allowed us to view the famous drenched terracotta rooftops of this world heritage city, (unfortunately not sundrenched) and also gave us the chance to play chicken with the trams and feel the full effects of the wind and rain (including my new and precious camera-well I am from Wales, so I suppose it had better get used to it and K needs to get used to where's my lens cap and why is it all dark being phrases constantly out of my mouth).

Red rickety roofs

After a quick shopping expedition where our sign language capabilities were tested to the limits in a successful search for a washing up brush, it was back on the Number 15 bus to Salgueiros. Having successfully made it to the big city and back again, we made our daily pilgrimage along the beachfront to inspect the work being done. We think that the council is trying to improve the boardwalk to protect the sand dunes and accompanying vegetation to prevent the sea from claiming the town, but this is my reading of the official sign, so who really knows. In any case, there are a multitude of diggers and trucks all working most days with a lot of men being required to have intense conversations on the best manoeuvering techniques for each one with not a lot of visible progress being made (the nephews I'm sure would understand these dialogues instinctively despite language barriers). However, to be fair, lack of progress may be due to the strange sand here, it is very coarse, but exceedingly soft even when wet, which makes walking along the beach a gruelling athletic event, so the beach normally looks pristine, except when the British tourists come along and doggedly try to persevere for the first couple of days and the odd tracks which go behind rocks where you will find locals sitting and sheltering from wind.

Digger - for the nephews

We finished the day with a treble first - our first chip-free meal and our first non-salad vegetables (peppers in our seafood rice in case anyone is really interested) and we also discovered vino verde and now know firsthand why Portugal is such a bibendious nation! We also learnt some new English which would be a shame not to share thanks to the menu- you could have and I quote 'opossums with garlic' (we think prawns) or an 'Alheira with a fighting egg' (no idea but sounds hard work if not quite scary) or for those with simple tastes 'beef with whole bunch of either mustard or port'. It does not take much to amuse us.

I'll have chips with that, please.

After two years of planning, E and I finally made it to Porto, Portugal's second biggest city. Well, we almost made it. We first glimpsed Porto on our ride from the airport, as our driver gesticulated wildly towards the spectacular view of Porto on the left, and the river Douro meeting the sea on the right. (We would have preferred a little less gesticulation at this point, and a little more steering. But he was right about the view.)

For now we're staying at Praia de Salgueiros, half an hour's bus ride from the city. Our apartment really does have sea views (albeit with some temporary scaffolding included). Liliana, our landlady, is young, helpful and friendly; her brother too (although as mentioned he sees steering wheels as optional when driving) and her mother delightful and helpful despite not speaking English - the will is there (and she insisted her son translate how to use the dishwasher, cooker etc - not sure he would have bothered on his own.) This part of the coast is still gearing up for tourism really - signs of development - but this means that you do feel you're still amongst the Portuguese, it's not overly touristy. I suppose it might be later in the season but right now we seem to be the only tourists around. (Mum and Dad - I've spotted a few camper vans.)


View from flat, complete with scaffolding

Territorial divides:
After a few holidays together (post E's back operation), apparently my mattress testing and suitcase manoeuvring skills have improved. Her packing skills have certainly improved - alleluia for the ebook. Anyway this time I get the master bedroom, but E gets the pink flowery sheets, to her delight. I get orange towels in the ensuite bathroom, E gets lime green. You could fit my studio apartment into this one about four times over. It really is lovely, well furnished, well stocked (I even found tea). I may change the locks.

 The all-important category of: FOOD
Our first foray into a supermarket had us under the mistaken impression these Porto types are incredibly healthy, as we could only see wholewheat pasta. (How wrong we were.) You know how UK supermarkets keep the chocolate at the tills for temptation? Well, that's where the bakery cakes were. Quick quiz: translate 'bolo de noz'. E thought it meant 'nose bites'. Her take on the local language is one of the reasons I travel with her. Still laughing at her attempt to ask for a banana in Italian.
Three days later, we now know that Porto does not go in for vegetables in a big way - chips, on the other hand, come with everything, including rice. We had a worrying moment earlier today with a cake when we suspected it of having potato on top. (It turned out to be apple.) We're so deprived of our 5 a day, we're seeing chips everywhere. And this is coming from two girls of good Irish stock, genetically pre-disposed to appreciate the potato.

Pleased to see the sausage wrapped in cheese comes with chips


Next post: E will regale you with tales of sand, how she almost started a banking crisis single handedly, the actual sight of Porto itself, and maybe something about diggers (particularly for nephews).